


Pretty Here, Pretty There

by Bbaegi



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 18:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15564279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bbaegi/pseuds/Bbaegi
Summary: Kyungsoo called Baekhyun pretty. Baekhyun - with his greasy hair, dark circles, and lazy outfit choices - didn't understand.





	Pretty Here, Pretty There

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this bc I'm weak and baek is pretty and deserves someone to tell him at least five times a day also you're lying if you don't think ksoo saying "you're pretty" with his deep ass voice isn't hot idk man baeksoo is just pretty and fluffy

The first time it happened, Baekhyun was trying to take a look at himself through his front camera. Trying, because he was pretty sure he usually didn’t look as disgusting but he was failing to see a better version of himself.

 

He scrunched his nose and turned his head, studying his jaw and then tilting his head up to see his chin. A bit of stubble, just tiny dots of shadows here and there but still noticeable since his skin was usually so much smoother. He didn’t think stubble suited him. Dark circles didn’t either. He kind of looked like a zombie. It wasn’t Halloween yet, unfortunately, but he was certain he’d scare kids away from his door if he just opened it looking the way he did now. But he should still start thinking about an actual costume already, Halloween didn’t really start on its exact date but in September. That was soon.

 

He glanced to the side when he heard Sehun raising his voice in protest while Jongin was trying to explain something to him and pointing at his laptop. They were most probably doing homework. Senior year was already hard enough but they’d die once they’d graduate and go to college. Baekhyun couldn’t wait to act like an old wise man trying to guide them through college despite having been on campus for only a year. But a new year meant new homework to do. He looked back into the image of himself on his screen because even _that_ was less unappealing than the thought of his own homework.

 

Sighing, he pressed his lips together and raised a hand to tug at a strand of overgrown, slightly greasy hair. He hadn’t showered in three days. That was too much. But he hadn’t had time to shower. Summer break wasn’t for showering every day and waking up early and looking decent while attending classes. Summer break was for sitting on his couch, on his desk chair and playing games all day long, until his ass left an imprint on whatever surface it was stuck on. Occasionally taking a break to watch stupid youtube videos or marathon series and movies was acceptable. 

 

Baekhyun might not look that great but he was living his best summer break life.

 

He pinched his cheek and pulled at the skin a little. His plump cheeks were the proof of how much he enjoyed life.

 

"You’re pretty."

 

Baekhyun turned his phone to the side a little to catch a form moving on the corner of the screen, behind him. He looked up to see Kyungsoo putting a glass of soda on the table before plopping down on the couch, next to him. He grabbed his straw and stirred his drink, ice cubes tinkling clearly. Much more clearly than the depth and quietude of Kyungsoo’s voice.

 

But Baekhyun had heard him. He stared at Kyungsoo, at the lack of acknowledgement on his features, at how small his hand looked when it grabbed his phone and he replied to a text message. Baekhyun had heard him. He frowned, locked his phone and lowered it down to his lap. He looked down at himself. He was wearing sweatpants. Or pajamas, depending on whether it was nighttime or daytime. He had been wearing sweatpants for a whole month now, ever since summer break had started. It wasn’t the most attractive outfit, especially when paired up with any of his oversized, plain shirts, but it was the most comfortable, livable clothes and Baekhyun would never give up on them.

 

Allied to his greasy overgrown hair, dark circles, and lack of care towards his appearance, it wasn’t the prettiest sight. 

 

Kyungsoo had said he was pretty. Baekhyun looked back up at him. He was sipping on his drink now, lips puckered around his straw, gaze stuck to his phone.

 

"What?" Baekhyun said, much too late, much too suddenly, much too quietly.

 

Kyungsoo looked up at him, raising his eyebrows, straw still trapped in his mouth.

 

It took Baekhyun a moment to speak again, a moment he spent wondering if he had heard it wrong, fueled both by Kyungsoo’s confused look and the fact that he certainly did not look attractive in _this_ state. Who even looked attractive during summer break?

 

"You said I was pretty?" Baekhyun questioned rather than stated, sentence broken into groups of puzzlement.

 

Kyungsoo shrugged and looked back down at his phone. Baekhyun frowned at him for a short while and then grabbed the drink Kyungsoo had prepared for him with his cute, small hands. His fingers slipped on the condensation around the glass and he almost dropped it. He was glad Kyungsoo was still absorbed in his phone and didn’t see him, he already felt embarrassed and destabilized enough.

 

He sipped on his drink, holding the straw and glancing at Kyungsoo until the refreshing prickle of bubbles on his tongue made it easy to let go of this unusual moment. It wasn’t a big deal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer meant ice cream. Ice cream meant melting sweetness. That meant a Baekhyun struggling with sticky fingers because he was much slower than the heat when it came to consuming his frozen treat. Not so frozen anymore, just dripping.

 

He groaned, licking the bottom of the ice cream to prevent more droplets from trailing down the stick his fingers felt stuck to. Kyungsoo laughed next to him and Baekhyun glared at him halfheartedly, regretting his decision of agreeing to Kyungsoo taking him out for ice cream in the middle of a summer afternoon. There wasn’t even any shade they could sit under, every good spot had already been taken by the time they’d arrived in the park.

 

"Don’t laugh, it’s your fault!" Baekhyun whined, pushing at Kyungsoo’s arm with his sugar-stained fingers.

 

"Don’t dirty my shirt," Kyungsoo groaned at him, the end of his sentence lost in laughter when Baekhyun wiped his hand on his chest just to be petty.

 

Baekhyun huffed and looked back down at his ice cream, gasping in panic when he noticed that of course, it was once again dripping. He caught the droplets with his tongue and narrowed his eyes at Kyungsoo, finding it unfair that he didn’t struggle as much as Baekhyun did but still accepting the tissue he held out to him.

 

He wiped his mouth with it, tried cleaning up his fingers as well and then wrapped it around the stick, holding it over it in hope that the melted ice cream would be collected by the tissue before attacking his skin more. He scrunched his nose at the discomfort on his hands and then engulfed half of the ice cream into his mouth, biting it off and sighing in contentment at the slight bitterness of the mango flavor. 

 

"You’re pretty," Kyungsoo suddenly said, right at the same moment as a child yelled in joy somewhere in front of them.

 

Baekhyun looked up at him, eyes wide and the frozen sugar in his mouth icing his entire body.

 

Kyungsoo didn’t look away this time, like he had done last week. Baekhyun still sometimes thought about it. Kyungsoo’s deep voice stating those words in a tone hushed maybe by wonder and by the calm he always carried around with him. It still sounded the same now. Except Kyungsoo was still looking at him, studying him, gaze flickering between Baekhyun’s features and his hands.

 

It still made him feel the same way. Weird. Calm but agitated at the same time. He scratched the tip of his shoe against the ground and looked down, gulping down his mouthful of ice cream, letting his lips melt into a smile. Because Baekhyun wasn’t really used to being called pretty. Because Baekhyun knew he wasn’t really pretty, especially not now. Because somehow, Kyungsoo did make him feel a little pretty when he pronounced those words. 

 

He wasn’t sure why he did it, why he had starting saying that out of nowhere. He wasn’t even sure he meant it but at the same time, Baekhyun knew Kyungsoo, knew he wouldn’t really joke like that and above everything, wouldn’t make fun of someone’s appearance or self-confidence.

 

Maybe he should ask. 

 

He didn’t. Because he noticed that two drops of orange had splattered on his shorts and he screeched before shoving the remains of his ice cream in his mouth to prevent any other disaster. 

 

He almost choked when Kyungsoo laughed hard enough for people around them to look at them judgmentally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Pretty," Kyungsoo said, eyes closed and mouth stretched wide into a drunken smile. "Pretty Byun Baekhyun," he repeated, slower, each of his words punctuated by a poke of his finger against Baekhyun’s arm.

 

He laughed, raising his shoulders and moving away from the tickles. He hadn’t drank that much, not enough to be snoring in Sehun’s arms like Jongin was doing and definitely not enough to be reading one of Kyungsoo’s philosophy textbooks like Chanyeol was doing.

 

But he had definitely drank enough to find Kyungsoo pretty as he uttered those words to him, sitting too close to him, one of his arms draped over the couch, his upper body turned towards Baekhyun. They were sitting on the floor, back to the couch, and they always sat so close together, especially when they were in Chanyeol’s small apartment, but it was different now.

 

Different because this was the third time Kyungsoo had called Baekhyun pretty and it didn’t feel like empty words anymore. Baekhyun probably smelled like beer, his face was probably oily with the glow of the end of a day and an evening spent laughing and drinking. He knew for sure the shirt he was wearing didn’t look good on him, he had worn it only because he hadn’t done his laundry and had nothing else to put on. And yet, Kyungsoo was smiling wide at him, looking at him with a clear but glassy gaze, staring at him as he called him pretty.

 

Sehun’s snoring suddenly harmonized with Jongin’s and Baekhyun’s gaze flickered to them. When he looked back at Kyungsoo, he still fell into his gaze. He didn’t know why this was happening, where it was coming from, Kyungsoo complimenting him in such a way. it didn’t even sound like a compliment. it sounded like a statement. He didn’t understand.

 

What he understood even less was why it made him feel giddy, made him want to grip something and squeeze it in his hands to prevent himself from screaming, made him want to smile back at Kyungsoo and wait until the next _pretty_ occurrence, made him remember that time back in high school. When Kyungsoo had been dating the prettiest girl in their class and Baekhyun had wished he were half as pretty as her.

 

That was years ago. Baekhyun had stopped years ago. But now Kyungsoo was calling him pretty and Baekhyun didn’t wish he were pretty anymore, but he still felt like he was.

 

"Am I?" he asked, delayed, too delayed. Quiet, too quiet. Fast, heartbeat too fast.

 

Kyungsoo’s gaze plunged to his lips. Baekhyun remembered the sensation of stickiness on his own fingers from the ice cream they had eaten only three days ago. He remembered having so much trouble looking at Kyungsoo’s eyes instead of his lips back when Kyungsoo used to help him with his English homework. Remembered looking at himself in the mirror, talking to himself like a lunatic and begging his reflection to stop looking for Kyungsoo. Not really his reflection but his heart, maybe. 

 

It had worked. Baekhyun had believed it worked - had made himself believe that it worked.

 

"You are," Kyungsoo whispered and he swayed closer to Baekhyun, closer, closer, until his forearm slid off the couch and he crashed his nose against Baekhyun’s shoulder.

 

They laughed, Kyungsoo’s features crinkled, eyes squeezing shut as he looked so damn silly with his mouth wide open, so close to Baekhyun, so far from looking ugly - like it was supposed to. Baekhyun was supposed to find his friends’ drunk faces ugly, not lovely. But this wasn’t really a friend, it was Kyungsoo. Baekhyun had tried burying that difference for so long, had hid it in such a deep place, he had forgotten it was even there, had convinced himself that it wasn’t there.

 

But it was.

 

"You are too," Baekhyun couldn’t help but blurt out, stomach hurting, slightly dizzy. "Pretty." 

 

So pretty Baekhyun couldn’t even decide what he wanted to look at. Beautiful eyes that always gave him confidence with a single look. Beautiful nose that reddened with the cold so easily during winter and that Kyungsoo always hid behind the scarf they had bought together. Beautiful eyebrows that Kyungsoo kept furrowed as he kept asking Baekhyun to explain something to him over and over again until Baekhyun got angry and Kyungsoo laughed at him. Beautiful lips that always apologized to him afterwards and smiled so dazzlingly Baekhyun never had enough breath left to do anything but accept.

 

"You’re so pretty," he repeated in an exhale.

 

It cut Kyungsoo’s laughter off. He opened his eyes and looked at Baekhyun and he really was so, so pretty. With the awkward length of his hair, strands growing out again after having been buzz-cut for so long, his eyebrows thick and messy but not repulsively so, the flush on his cheeks and the rosiness of his ears. The smile, a little crooked, faint but unavoidably endearing. And perhaps Baekhyun would never be able to avoid this. Kyungsoo. His feelings.

 

"Thank you," Kyungsoo whispered, slurred, and captivated Baekhyun with the pucker of his lips around those words.

 

Baekhyun patted Kyungsoo’s thigh, left his hand there, felt himself swaying, drawn closer, closer, until a loud thump startled him away from Kyungsoo.

 

He still tumbled over Kyungsoo in the end, laughing until it hurt as they watched Jongin run after Chanyeol while threatening to hit him with the textbook he had dropped and cursing him for scaring him awake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Am I pretty?" Baekhyun asked, looking up at the ceiling, listening to the television’s chattering.

 

They’d been watching it earlier, until Baekhyun had yawned, whined about being tired, and lied down on the floor. Kyungsoo had followed soon after, stretching beside him and keeping him silent company. Baekhyun hadn’t fallen asleep though. Not when being so close to Kyungsoo made him feel things he had never been able to suffocate, but had always been good at ignoring. Not anymore.

 

He turned his head to look at Kyungsoo and was welcomed into his gaze.

 

They weren’t drunk, weren’t high on sugar, weren’t surrounded by anyone else but themselves this time. He hadn’t heard it in four days. Baekhyun wanted to hear it. Because it felt like Kyungsoo saw him differently than the way he saw himself in the mirror, like he really saw Baekhyun, truly looked at him.

 

It didn’t take too long for Kyungsoo to answer. "You’re pretty," he said and Baekhyun really didn’t know what was it that made it so believable. Maybe the earnest gaze, the unwavering tone, the exhale at the end of his sentence, the way Baekhyun collided with Kyungsoo’s gaze so much more often lately.

 

He grinned and brought a hand up to his mouth, rubbing at his lips, at his chin. When he looked at his fingers, there was a bit of red on his skin.

 

"I had tomato sauce on my chin though," he commented, wiping his hand on his shirt very unattractively, he supposed. He probably also didn’t look handsome while eating pizza but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered more than pizza. Especially pizza shared with Kyungsoo.

 

"Doesn’t matter," Kyungsoo said, folding a leg, knee bumping against Baekhyun’s.

 

He wasn’t tired of this. He really wasn’t, but he wanted more. So much more than Kyungsoo calling him pretty and then going back to being his normal, close, comfortable friend. So much more than his heart beating and beating for Kyungsoo without ever being acknowledged. His heartbeat had been running to Kyungsoo for so long, tirelessly, with no complaints, and Baekhyun thought it was time for it to reach something, reach what it had been seeking all this time.

 

"Where am I pretty then? Why am I pretty?" he asked then, looking at Kyungsoo, trying his hardest not too sound and look too hopeful. But Baekhyun had always failed when it came to Kyungsoo. He wanted to win, for once. He wanted to win Kyungsoo.

 

Kyungsoo didn’t say anything, for such a long time, Baekhyun wondered if this was another one of those failures. He looked away, swallowed, and tried gathering the strength to sit up but before he could, he felt something brushing his chin. He turned to Kyungsoo again, fingers gripping his own shirt when he saw his gaze focusing on Baekhyun’s chin, right where his finger was pressed.

 

"You have a mole here. It’s pretty," he said, smiling as he stared, then gliding his finger up to Baekhyun’s cheek, tenderness so abundant in his touch, Baekhyun felt it cradle his heart. "Here too," he said, pressing on his cheek, Baekhyun supposed on the mole he had there. He felt the corners of his lips stretching into a smile, reaching for Kyungsoo’s touch. "You’re pretty here," Kyungsoo whispered, sliding closer to Baekhyun, tracing the bridge of his nose and then pulling his hand away from his face. The light tap of his hand on Baekhyun’s chest coincided with the beat of his heart. "Pretty there." 

 

Baekhyun parted his lips, breathed in, calmed himself down, failed, and it didn’t matter.

 

Kyungsoo’s hand lingered on his chest. Baekhyun’s feelings for him had always lingered in his chest. He was so close to them, so close to Baekhyun’s heart. For the first time ever.

 

"Pretty enough to be kissed?" Baekhyun whispered, letting his feelings jump out of him for the first time ever. Because there might be someone to catch them now.

 

Kyungsoo pressed his lips into a tight line, didn’t look away but didn’t speak either. He just nodded, once, feebly, and then again, firmer, for longer.

 

"Why don’t you, then?" Baekhyun heard himself ask, softly, as faint as the nod of Kyungsoo’s head. 

 

This was unfamiliar, novel. Baekhyun loved this. Feeling shy, making Kyungsoo shy.

 

He loved the timidity of Kyungsoo’s lips when they pressed against his after long seconds of staring, checking, and reading. After long years of Baekhyun waiting. 

 

He loved how easy it was to look into each other’s eyes and laugh once they pulled away. He loved how Kyungsoo let him kiss him again, just pecks because this was comfortable and pleasant but still so new.

 

Pecks were enough, though. Especially when Baekhyun could kiss the corner of Kyungsoo’s lips, the apple of his cheek. Kyungsoo kissed the side of his neck, the tip of his nose. He kissed Kyungsoo’s chin, his silly smile, his embarrassed groan, the tail of an eyebrow. 

 

He kissed him here, kissed him there, hoped Kyungsoo felt pretty everywhere.


End file.
